Day 12 & 13 – Some people really shouldn’t be allowed on boats

But then maybe I’m forgetting how bad I was when I was first let loose with a boat.

More of that in a bit, back to day 10 which was important and eventful because we picked up a new crew member, Nancy’s back! Staying with us for a few days before going to see her family on mainland Greece.  We picked Nancy up at Koufonisia from the monster high speed 4 ferry,  the plan was to go on to Dhenoussa, but there’s more strong winds afoot and Dhenoussa is not the place to end up. So we decided to spend another day in Schinoussa. Not much to note other than this place will instantly relax you. A reminder of how gorgeous Schinoussa is and a random picture of a van that turned up selling all manor of stuff.

Day 13 sees us going for an on the way stop to Folegandros, IOS. It’s not our favourite place but useful to stock up and its on the way. And Nancy has never been here.

Very windy when we arrived so it must be time for a parking calamity. We parked Les Troyens, no bother and took Bill’s lines no bother. No sooner than I’d switched the engine off a boat parks next to us. I could see they hadn’t let out enough chain. No biggie i thought, they’ll just have to go out and try again.

Add a third boat to the mix which when we arrived was parked side too because the skipper had failed 3 times to park stem too. Some helpful Swedish lads, who were capable but muffed up and ended up leaning all over our neighbour who in turn was leaning all over us.

Our neighbour decides he’s going to leave. As he leaves makes a mess and drifts over our anchor chain because of the cross wind. our chain catches his keel then his rudder but he very luckily manages to free himself.

Then as he pulls up his anchor he also lifts our chain which eventually pulls our well set anchor out of the sea bed. The two anchors are now cuddling, intertwined, but above water. Ellison tries to persuade the crew to launch a dinghy to clear the problem to no avail.

The skippers preference is to charge around more our less in a circle and in doing so wraps the anchor chain around his keel.

Meanwhile I’m now having to motor in forward gear to keep Les Troyens from clattering the harbour wall.

This is a much more serious situation. Fortunately there is a harbour authority who have a rib which is dispatched to the scene. One of the harbour authority staff dons a mask and unwraps the chain and clears it from our anchor.  A piccie of the offending scene.

The offending skipper then clears off without so much of a word of thanks!

We of course then had to ‘re-anchor, which we did no bother, plenty if chain (45 metres in 6 metres of depth) in case the wind kicks up as we were being blown on to the harbour wall.

We were a tad knackered after all the fuss and celebrated with a Gyros and a wee cocktail party.  It was an extremely difficult parking situation and could have ended very badly.

So the weather situation has changed or plans.  With the forecast Folegandros doesn’t have a great plan B so it out of the equation.  We’re off to Sifnos, which we love and has great bad weather options and plenty to do.  Two piccies of IOS, a sunset piccie of a really pretty church at the entrance to the harbour and a random bloke on a speedboat being towed along the road by the harbour.

Yamas!